


In Ways of Survival

by remy71923



Series: Soviets in Love [2]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Red Room (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22209586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remy71923/pseuds/remy71923
Summary: The Red Room had only taught young Natalia Romanova means of survival as a lone wolf—a lone spider. But how she views survival, how she views living and taking her place in the world is changed when the Winter Soldier started to treat her as more than just a little spider, and started to teach her that survival is not necessarily something done alone.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Series: Soviets in Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561978
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: BuckyNat Secret Santa 2019





	In Ways of Survival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Punchyourwayout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punchyourwayout/gifts).



The instinct to survive is human nature itself, they said, and every aspect of a human’s personality is derived from that instinct.

All her young life, all Natalia Romanova ever learned is to survive, and she does so in the most violent sense, because it’s the nature of where she was raised. She was taught that to be able to survive, she has to be good enough, that she has to remain isolated and alone, without friends nor strings attached, because those will only slow down her process to survival. When she was six, she had learned how to kill the girl who slept beside her at night, and who shared her secret food stash at night with her, with her bare hands—because according to Madame B, she was no friend nor sister, and she will only slow down Natalia’s process to survival. When she attempted to bargain, a gun was pointed at them as they fought, when she effectively broke her neck and killed the girl.

_ Nobody in here is your friend, little spider,  _ she would tell her.  _ If you want to be the best, and if you want to survive, you should learn to never treat anyone as such. _

One aspect of her personality that had derived from her survival instinct, and more so affected by the nature of her upbringing and daily surroundings, is the fact that she is a loner—a lone spider who only looks after herself and kills those who may threaten that survival.

_ A spider needs no friends, _ she told herself, as the girls in her class continued to reduce greatly in number, a major part of it because of her doing.  _ A spider needs no friends to survive. _

When she was fourteen, Madame B had declared her to be officially a woman. It was also then that she had encountered the concept of an intimate contact with a male mark. She was taught that part of her survival should include not only the use of her hands, guns and knives, but by the use of her whole body.

She was always told that she was beautiful, a lady with long wavy red hair, rosy cheeks and bright piercing green eyes. And she was always told that such a beauty like hers was always the weakness of men—and men, she was told, was one of those who must be eliminated, as they were a great hindrance to the survival of a young spider like her. That’s why whenever she was sent in missions where she had to seduce—meaning touch, gaze and kiss—a make mark, she would kill without hesitation. Even if the male mark happened to be a man that had bright blue eyes and beautiful brown hair that she found herself being lost in the way he spoke, the way he caressed her and took care of her, her instinct had always taught her to kill. Kill, or she won’t survive. Kill, or  _ she _ will be killed.

She had only been fifteen then, and even so, it was the first time she swore she felt her heart beat when she first encountered the male mark. When she got home after killing him, she tried to hide her tears but failed, and for that, she earned herself a strike on the cheek, ruining what once was her perfectly rosy and creamy cheek.

_ Foolish girl. A spider does not mourn for doing what it means to survive, _ Madame B had scolded her.  _ If you want to be the best, it you want to survive, you should learn to never mourn for anyone. _

But the man was good, she reasoned, and the man had beautiful blue eyes and curly brown hair. The man was kind, who fell in love with her almost as immediately as she fell in love with him.

_ A spider does not love. Love is for children, and you are no child, but you are the Black Widow,  _ she told her.  _ Or so you will be, if you would only focus. A spider does not need love to survive. _

Apart from being a loner, she figured, she survived by having no heart. She viewed love as a hindrance to survival, an illusion cast by foolish men so they can live but she can’t. The matters of the heart are irrelevant, foolish and unimportant, and those who believe otherwise will not live a long life unlike her. They will not survive, but she will. She will, and it’s all that matters.

She was able to live and survive under all these terms until she turned eighteen. And by that time, she was fully aware of the talks of the whole Red Room, with their eyes set on  _ her _ as the Red Room’s first ever Black Widow, a heartless and ruthless killer used as a spy for the KGB. It was then the Red Room started sending her off on missions much more complex and complicated than she had been initially sent to when she was younger. The missions were missions where she would function on her own, every one of which she had executed successfully, without a trace and almost too perfectly. Madame B had reasoned these missions to be part of her induction as the Black Widow, a title every girl in the academy had dreamt of being worthy to earn, but it’s a title that she knew was reserved and made solely for  _ her. _

By then, all Natalia ever knew was that to survive, she had to kill. To survive, she had to be alone. To survive, she should never fail. To survive, she should never love nor ever have friends. At eighteen, she was so fully convinced that all of these will help her survive, that all of these will help her be the best. That is, until she had encountered the Winter Soldier.

His was the name and title of a man who was feared—ruthless and heartless in all senses, the epitome of excellence and the primary example of who they had wanted the girls in the Red Room to be. He was a killer, a flawless and perfect one at that, who had killed in significant figures and was never caught as he never left a trace—like a swift shadow in the night. He was one of their trainers, one of the best the Red Room had, but that was all he ever was. He had always been silent, his stare piercing, intimidating and never-changing. He had a metal arm, one that would be mistaken as his primary weapon in combat, but he would later prove them wrong by showcasing that his metal arm was not his secret weapon in becoming the perfect killer, but  _ he _ was. He was tactical, swift, smart and complex—a soldier of the best kind as he delivers his missions well with perfect results.

He was no stranger to her. He trained her, but she never put much thought into him, as she thought he had never put much thought into her. She was familiar with the way he fought, but she was never smart enough to figure out the complexities of how he does so, nor was she as fast of a learner to outsmart him and his moves.

But he was familiar with the way she moved. She knew this, because it was the first words she had ever heard him speak to her when she tried to outsmart and outmatch him in a training session. “I taught you how to fight, all the things you know now, and all the moves you do,” he had told her in Russian, but something in his accent had told her he was no native. “You can never fool me, especially with how well I know you.”

His voice was gruff, raspy like it hadn’t been used in a long time, yet somehow gentle and soft unlike how he had probably intended it to be. She was not intimidated, not in the least, or she  _ was, _ until the man opened his mouth to speak.

“You’ll see. You do not know me that well.” she had told him in retaliation, in perfect Russian, her accent smooth and unbroken, unlike his, because  _ she _ was Russian and  _ he _ was not. But the man just smirked and never said anything afterwards as he left, and since then, he never uttered a single word again.

She knew the Winter Soldier as nothing more than a soldier who had trained her how to fight, the one who had taught her all the things she knew as a fighter and a spy, and a man who merely existed in her life just to intimidate and make her better in surviving as the Black Widow. It was all she ever knew about him, apart from all the things others say about him, all of which she never cared to know, nor she ever cared to listen at all.

All that mattered was herself, and not even the Winter Soldier can make her care for anything and anybody beyond herself.

“The Winter Soldier will be accompanying you in the next mission,” Madame B had told her one fateful evening, sliding towards her the folder of her mark and the details of the mission they will conduct the following day. She took the folder in her delicate hands and opened to read the file. “He will be there as not only your partner but also your evaluator. Whatever he will say about you in this mission will be of great weight in deciding whether you will be deemed as our Black Widow.”

The mark—their target—was a Danish philanthropist-politician, affiliated with the rivals of the Kremlin, and the KGB had sent orders to kill the man on-sight. The strategy was the usual setup for a typical mission for the Black Widow: dress up in disguise for a party, seduce and then kill. But she will not be the one to kill him, the Winter Soldier was tasked with that, as he would stationed from a far away vantage point and away from the eyes of many. Her sole task was to isolate this man from the rest of his party, and the Winter Soldier will do his job. She thought it had been a thoughtless task, a job too easy she could do it alone without the aid of the Winter Soldier, a job too easy to be a form of an induction so she will become the Black Widow, especially as her task did not involve violence and killing, those of which she had been most comfortable with than seducing and isolating so somebody else can do the job.

She and the Winter Soldier were dropped off in a safehouse, where they prepared to officially carry out the task. She had worn on herself a long burgundy gown, tied her hair neatly in a high bun and did her own makeup like how she had been trained all her life to do so, making herself look presentable, worth noticing, while the Winter Soldier busied himself in cleaning his guns and weapons he would use for the mission.

“How do I look?” she had asked him before they left, as she stepped out of her small room and into the living room of the safehouse where he had been.

And he paused in his task as looked up at her, his eyes roaming her body longer and more intently than she expected it to be, as something in his eyes glinted so differently and so briefly, that as a trained spy, she had almost missed it.

“It will do the job.” he had simply said, before turning his attention back to his weapons, and she figured it was the closest approval she could ever get from her trainer.

She finally understood why this mission had needed the aid of the Winter Soldier, as the task of isolating the mark had proven itself to be a rather difficult task, as the man turned out to be more difficult than the rest of her male marks. He was no different from men in the way he ogled at her and talked, the way he grabbed her so possessively and kissed her so obsessively like she had always been his, but this man had more ego than the rest. He showed her off, and even with the nibbles she had given him on his ear, the whispers she had given him, the small kisses she had planted on his neck that elicited moans and gasps from him, even with the way she guided his hands all over her body until she could feel the bulge in his pants against her stomach, he had never given in to her seduction, to her whispers of spending the night with her in a private room where they planned to eliminate him.

It took her all evening to attempt to figure out what had been wrong, why the man seemed so immune to the charms and ways of the Black Widow, when her mark surprised her by holding her down by her wrists and pointing a gun on her head, while the rest of the guests followed, all their weapons aimed at her.

“Game over, little spider.” he had said, and that’s when the realization dawned on her: what made  _ him _ a particularly difficult mark was the fact that he knew who she was all along, because he had known about the secrets of the Kremlin, and how it planned to kill him using her. What made  _ him _ particularly dangerous, a man on top of the KGB’s hitlist, was the fact that he was familiar with the Black Widow program, and the existence of the Red Room Academy, and he, as a politician, was planning on using that against the Kremlin to take down Russia.

_ Damn it. _

“Nobody’s gonna save you now.”

_ No, _ she thought, he was right. Nobody is there to save her but herself, so she quickly thought of a plan, quickly yet carefully strategized in her head what her next move would be so she could somehow escape yet at the same time deliver the mission expected from her. She thought of the risks and thought of them well, but she figured there was  _ no _ greater risk in this mission than failing. She would rather  _ die _ in the hands of the mark than come out of it alive but fail, because she was not made to be a failure, and failing would be a more shameful way to die than just by dying in itself.

So she made a move, and she risked what she can, including her life—her instinct to survive.

It cost her a lot. Because while the mission clearly stated that the mission should leave no trace of death nor blood, nor any sign that she should have been there in the first place, the site was practically drenched and dripping with blood at the end of the evening. The blood of which was the blood of her mark, the blood of the others who had been there, and as well as hers, as by the end of the evening, she was lying alongside the dead bodies of those whom she and the Winter Soldier, who had come by, had killed, barely alive and hardly breathing.

And she was ready.  _ God, _ she was ready, and oh how much she wanted to just  _ die _ right there and then. She had failed, and she failed so profusely she felt ashamed should she even live. She was ready, and for moments, she thought that she was dead.

But she opened her eyes, and never had she been so greatly disappointed that she had lived.

She tried to move, but a sharp pain shoots in her body that she hissed and groaned in pain, and that’s when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk in the room. Her arm wrapped around her abdomen—bandaged and freshly changed. She lay back on the bed, and looked down as she inspected all the injuries she incurred—a gunshot wound on her right shoulder, more gunshot wounds on her abdomen, cuts and bruises all over her face and the rest of her body. She was  _ sure _ she had died. She was  _ sure _ she could’ve been dead.

“If you move too much, you will only hurt yourself,” he said in Russian, and she looked up with wide eyes to find him approaching her almost cautiously as he sat on the edge of the bed she is lying on. His metal hand rested on her hand on her abdomen, and she felt a shiver rise up as the cool metal came in contact with her skin. “We need you to recover fast before we go home.”

_ Home, _ such a foreign concept—a spider like her has no home.

But as she looked at his eyes—baby blue and bright, so gentle and unlike what she had ever seen in him before, she was  _ almost _ convinced she had a home. That the sick and twisted Academy that raised a perfect killer such as her, that housed a silent, heartless and ruthless assassin such as him, was her home— _ their _ home, and she almost couldn’t believe it.

“If I go back, they will kill me,” she replied in a raspy voice, in Russian, as she licked her dry mouth and swallowed down her throat. He watched her intently as she did so. “I failed them. I failed the mission. I have been made, and the mission had been compromised, and now they will kill me.”

“The mark is dead. The mission was no failure,” he told her, gently removing her hand on her abdomen as she hissed in slight pain. He paused and looked at her, and she took a deep breath and nodded before he gently put her hand on her side. “When we go back, you will tell them that it was me who compromised the mission, that it was  _ me _ that they recognized and not you.”

Her eyebrows furrowed and she frowned slightly. “But that is not the truth.” she said quietly.

“Since when does a spider of the Red Room concern herself with the truth?” he asked, looking back at her eyes as she fell silent. He paused for a moment, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he contemplated for a moment by himself, but she spoke up before he even could.

“There might be witnesses. There might be those who will say that it was  _ me _ whom they recognized and not you, that my appearance had been the one that compromised the mission, and you had no part in it,” she told him as a means of putting some reason behind his twisted sense of logic to somehow defend and protect her. Nobody should do that. She was taught that nobody else would do that for her. “We will both get killed should that happen, for not telling them the truth.”

“The room was wiped off any living body. We both killed them all,” he told her. “Never say a word about what happened, or they will kill  _ you.” _

But she swallowed down her throat as she looked at him. “They might kill you, too.” she told him quietly, and he shook his head as he held her gaze.

“They will hurt me, but they cannot afford to kill me,” he said, as he got up from the bed. “You, on the other hand, they  _ can _ afford to kill as they still have other girls in the academy to train and replicate as the next Black Widow. You cannot afford to get yourself killed.”

She frowned as she watched him turn and proceed to leave the room, and she pursed her lips. “Why don’t you allow them to kill me?” she asked quietly, watching him pause in his tracks, his back facing her as she looked at the back of his head—his long brown wavy hair tied into a ponytail. “Why save me, when you can save yourself?”

It was what she was taught since the beginning—her mantra for her own instinct of survival. She was taught to protect only her life and never depend on others to care for her, much less allow them to get close to her. She was a stranger to the concept of help, and  _ this? _ This was something new, especially coming from the Winter Soldier himself. This was something she never thought she could experience, much less see its fruition with her own two eyes as it extended towards her.

Yet here she was, on the other end of the help being extended to her by no other less than the infamous Winter Soldier, who was always thought to be heartless, ruthless, emotionless and quiet. She could attribute it to naivety—both on her part and his, a dreadful miscalculation for a mistaken exchange of trust. But as he looked back to meet her eyes, she somehow knew that for him, this was no miscalculation, as this was no mistake, nor an attribution to naivety in his part. She somehow  _ saw _ the gentleness, the genuinity in his eyes.

“There is more to life than just by looking after yourself, little spider.” he told her softly, as he turned and walked away from her room before she could open her mouth to say anything in return.

They lived in silence over the next few days in the confines of the safehouse for her recovery, as he would watch over her as she slept, cook her food and feed her. He would diligently change her set of bandages and tend to the minor wounds and bruises he might have missed. She never resisted, afraid that any move of non-compliance to the Winter Soldier might reach Madame B, and she wouldn’t hesitate to kill her, yet also relieved that someone was taking care of her—and for once, she indulged herself in the feeling of being taken care of, which was apparently something  _ very _ good. She indulged in the gentleness of his eyes in the way he looked at her silently, in the way he preferred to touch her hand with his flesh hand before every time he would get up to leave her room, and in the way they would be comfortably silent as she drifted off to sleep while he polished his weapons, as well as her knives and guns on the seat beside her.

When they got back, she never said a word. Not even as she watched them immediately take the Winter Soldier away, his gentle baby blue eyes now cold and piercing as they took him by the arms as she was left to watch him go.

Madame B had commended her for a successful mission, gushed about how their next Black Widow was even better than Hydra’s “master” assassin, the Winter Soldier, who was told that he had compromised the entire mission that led to its disaster and her injuries. She wanted to say something, anything, tell Madame B the truth as they took the Winter Soldier away, but he looked back at her with those gentle eyes she had grown familiar with for the last few days, those that took care of her and indulged her by making herself feel good, pleading her what he had asked from her, and she fell silent.

“What are they going to do to him?” she asked Madame B, as both of them watched the men with the Winter Soldier disappear down the hallway of the Red Room. She looked at Natalia with piercing brown eyes as Natasha looked back at her.

“What they always do to weapons that go against their original purpose,” she replied in her usual cool voice. “Fix him up.”

She never knew what it meant, never at all learned what they had done to him, but for some reason, it sent a chill up her spine, and she never asked about it again.

She didn’t see him for the next few weeks or so, and the next time she did, those baby blue eyes had been cold once again as he looked at her during one of their usual training sessions. He was one of those watching her, evaluating her as she sparred with a trainer. She was losing the fight, her punches now pulled and strained, her kicks weak and heavy, her attempts of defense and retaliation futile as she took in the heavy punches and the swift kicks, falling multiple times on the floor and being strangled too many times before Madame B finally clapped her hands, signalling the end of training.

“Sloppy. Pretending to fail,” Madame B scolded her as she slowly stood up with wobbly legs, nursing her surely bruised side throbbing with pain. “You do remember what we do to weapons who go against their original purpose.”

Her eyes flickered over to the Winter Soldier, whose cool scrutinizing baby blue eyes were trained on her, as if still watching and observing her, as if  _ not _ at all recognizing her. He turned away and she released a heavy breath as she panted, the corner of her eyes stinging as the pain continued to throb and shoot up her body.

_ Fix him up. But fixing at what cost? _

“If you want to survive in a world where you have no place in, you cannot afford to fail—much less pretend to do so,” she told her coldly. “A spider like you—you have no place in the world. You have to make one for yourself.”

_ I have no place in the world. _

Later that evening in the confines of her own room—the room Madame B had gifted her with after her “successful” mission with the Winter Soldier—as she nursed her own wounds and bruises from the gruesome sparring match of the day, she was surprised to find an unexpected visitor drop by. The unexpected visitor held an ice pack in his metal hand, and a package wrapped in a cloth in his flesh hand. He closed the door silently behind him, and she watched him cautiously as he approached her slowly.

He nodded over at the cold towel pressed on her bare side. “That will not help in healing.” he pointed out.

“My blood will help me heal. This is just a minor inconvenience.” she tried to tell him coolly.

He shook his head. “Your blood with the serum or not, a bruise can still worsen if not treated well.” he said. He laid his package down on her nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. He moved his flesh hand over her on her side, and slowly removed the cold towel to reveal a huge dark-purplish bruise covering her left side that almost reached her stomach. His eyes softened at the sight as she watched him intently, particularly his eyes—those piercing baby blue ones that was cold and forgetting when the day started, now turned soft and gentle as he looked at her now, like how he had looked at her when he took care of her during those days he took care of her.

She still wondered about that, about the time he took care of her when he easily could’ve left her for dead. The time he took the blame for her own set of mistakes that led to a fallout in a mission. She wondered why he would rather make the foolish decision to save her so  _ she _ can survive, and he nearly hadn’t. It appalled her, challenged what she knew, especially as he gently laid the ice pack on her side and she hissed at the coolness yet relief of it on her bruise. He murmured something so gently she failed to catch it, as she laid her head back on her pillow and took a deep breath.

“Hold this.” he instructed her with the ice pack, and she did, her eyes flickering over to him as she watched him grab the package on her nightstand. He opened the package to reveal a small metal container, and two slices of bread. Her eyes widened at the treat, especially as she hadn’t eaten dinner yet due to her injuries, and opened the container as the smell of beetroot soup—her favorite—filled her room. The corner of his lips quirked up into a small smile as he picked up the slice of bread. She lifted her hand to take it from his but he shook his head.

“Press the ice pack against your side with your hand, and you cannot move your other arm because of your injuries,” he told her, bringing the bread to her mouth as she took a bite of it. “Let me feed you.”

She couldn’t help but nod and comply, and he nodded just as he patiently fed her the bread, and eventually the soup, while she pressed the ice pack on her side with her one hand. They were silent, as if content and comfortable with each other’s company and their stolen glances, as well as how patient he was as he fed her the bread and soup he brought for her.

She finished the soup with a soft burp, and it was the first time that Natasha had heard a chuckle from the Winter Soldier, as well a wide smile. It was beautiful, both his smile and his laugh, and it spread a certain kind of warmth in her chest that made her smile as well. He lifted his hand, his thumb brushing gently in the corner of her mouth to wipe away the crumbs from the bread.

“Not a word to Madame B about this,” he told her softly as he pulled his hands away to she can tie the cloth to the sealed empty container and spoon. “She did not want you for dinner, as per usual because of a bad match. But you could never last a night without food. I cannot allow you to.”

Natalia frowned, and she knitted her eyebrows together. “I am not weak.” she told him firmly, and he let out a huff of a chuckle as he shook his head.

“I am not saying you are weak, little spider, in fact you are not,” he said gently as he brushed some of her hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear with his flesh hand as he got up to stand, his empty package clutched in his metal hand. “There is more to life than just by being alone, by surviving alone.”

She blinked and tilted her head. “A little spider needs no friends,” she echoed the words Madame B had instilled in her mind. “I need to find my own place in the world alone.”

“And what makes you think you can do just that? Finding your place in a world all by  _ yourself,” _ he replied, looking at her as he towered over her. “What makes you think you are a little spider and nothing more?”

“And what  _ more _ am I supposed to be?” she asked him quietly.

“Human. Human like you were before they raised you in here, human like you’ve been fighting all along for yourself to be,” he answered her softly. “You are more than a little spider, and I know you enough to say that you are smart enough to know and believe that.”

“Like how  _ you _ are more than just a soldier, especially to me?” she asked, and she watched as he visibly froze, his eyes widening slightly as if struck, his mouth opening slightly in a surprise he had failed to conceal after her question.

“You have been good to me and I don’t understand,” she continued quietly as she watched him turn away from her as if ashamed. Her gaze softened as she sighed and watched his figure in the shadows of her room. “Help me understand.”

But he stayed silent as he also stood put in his ground inside her room. She slowly sat back up, wincing as she pressed her ice pack closely to her side.  _ “Soldat.” _ she called softly, and his head snapped back up, as he turned to look at her—his eyes cold and piercing that she flinched in surprise at the sudden shift in gaze.

He narrowed his eyes at her, but she held her gaze in his eyes, no matter how cold and piercing his eyes were becoming by the second. But he was the first one to break, as he lowered his head and looked away, turning back towards the door, as without another word, he left.

She had seen him the following day in training, but unlike the day prior, he avoided her gaze, and each time she caught him looking, he would quickly look away, his eyebrows furrowing until a crease would form between them as he frowned, an almost frustrated look present on his beautiful face. He would look as if he was at war with himself—like he was in an argument by himself, and he was trying to win but he was losing, as he would shake his head to snap himself back before proceeding back to business.

_ Human like you were, human like you’ve been fighting all along for yourself to be.  _ Human, like how her instinct of survival had been human all along, the instinct of which that had been twisted and turned by how the Red Room tried so hard to make her something otherwise?

Human like the man behind the soldier he was trying so hard for himself to be?

At the hour of the evening when she knew everybody else in the Red Room to be asleep and have gone in their respective quarters, she snuck out of her room as she put a robe over her nightgown. She padded lightly in the hallway, like a shadow in the night, navigating herself around the wing where she knew she would find what she was looking for—where she knew she would find  _ who _ she was looking for.

And when she opened the door to find him only in his trousers, shirtless and body glistening with sweat, sitting by the edge of his bed, his hands tightly gripping the edge tightly, their eyes met, and her eyes were met by his bright baby blue ones—as if so conflicted, so confused, fighting against someone, something—fighting against  _ himself. _ But when he looked at her, his eyes visibly relaxed, as if an ocean calmed down from a raging storm, as his grip on the edge of his bed loosened she could almost hear the faint creak on his metal hand.

She closed the door behind her as she took two steps forward, and he watched her cautiously. “They will see you in here,” he told her weakly, and she swallowed. “You are not allowed to be here.” he continued, but he said so weakly, that she was convinced even  _ he _ didn’t believe in that.

“I don’t care.” she told him quietly, as his eyes scanned her from head to toe.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, and she took two more steps towards him, without a word as she continued to watch him cautiously and silently. He sighed. “Little spider—"

“I am more than a little spider,” she echoed his own words to him as he pursed her lips, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat as he swallowed. “You do not call me that, because I am  _ not _ just a little spider.”

Something in his eyes shifted, as his gaze softened at her. “Natalia.” he whispered quietly, his voice hushed that she barely missed it, but it had been loud enough for his voice to make the hairs at the back of her neck rise. He got up from his bed and took a few light silent steps towards her, as she looked up to gaze at his face, and he looked down to gaze softly at hers. He lifts his flesh hand, albeit hesitant at first, to cup her face, and her breath hitches, her eyes fluttering close as she felt his cool and calloused hand on her face, his thumb brushing gently on the apple of her cheek. She laid her hand on his as she sighed.

_“Moy soldat,”_ _My soldier,_ she whispered, and she opened her eyes when she heard him sigh in response. She lifted a hand to stroke his cheek gently with the tips of her fingers, and his eyes closed, his long lashes barely touching his cheeks as he let out a breath. “Tell me your name. Tell me who you are, who you _really_ are.” she told him softly.

“James,” he answered quietly and almost quickly in a hushed voice, and she smiled, pressing her palm on his cheek, as he let out a small smile. “James Buchanan Barnes.”

“James,” she whispered, her hand traveling at the back of his head, her fingers digging in his thick brown hair, to pull him closer to her, their foreheads resting on each other. He let out a huffed chuckle, brushing his nose against hers as she smiled widely. “That is who you are,  _ moy soldat.” _

But as if on instinct, as if she had said something vehemently wrong, he pulled away swiftly and turned back from her as she shivered from the sudden lack of his touch, the sudden lack of his presence with her. She watched, confused, as his shoulders slumped and his head shook as his fists clenched at his sides.

“That is not who I am,” he said quietly, flatly and almost mechanically, like a repetitio and a mantra she had been telling himself over and over again. “That will never be who I am.”

She shook her head even though she cannot see him, and took the few steps between them. “You are not just a soldier,” she told him softly, like how he had told her the previous night, and he sighed, but she continued. “You are human. You are human.”

“You do not know me,” he replied quietly. “You do not know what I have done.”

“I know,” she told him softly. “I know all of it.” And she did. She knew of the blood in his hands, and the lives he took, but she didn’t care. She somehow knew of the heart beneath the soldier, the man under the mask, because he allowed her a glimpse of him—allowed her the glimpse of who he was, and who he was was beautiful and good and human, and  _ those _ were all she cared about.

He shook his head but she continued, “Your name is James, and you are more than a soldier.” She took a deep breath as she rested a palm on his bare back, as his breath hitched in his throat. “And who you are,  _ milii moi, _ is somebody who is good to me.”

He turned to her, his eyes wide and glassy as he looked at her, and she gave him a small disarming smile. “I want to be good,” she told him softly. “I want to be good like you, so I can take care of you...as you had taken care of me.”

And he completely turned his body towards her, his eyes wide, mouth slightly open agape, as she pulled her hand back from him, taking a shaky breath as she started to untie her robes. His eyes flickered to where her fingers worked on untying the knot as he shook his head. “Natalia…” he whispered.

“I want to take care of you,” she told him softly. “So teach me.” She undid the knot and shrugged off her robes, letting it drop to the floor, leaving her in her thin white nightgown. His breath hitched as his eyes roamed her body. “Teach me to take care of you.”

She took another deep breath and started to grab her nightgown to remove it over her head, leaving her only in underwear. He shook his head weakly as his breaths quickened, and he looked back at her eyes, wide and imploring as she looked back at his.

“Teach me,” she whispered, taking a few steps to close the distance between them, as his flesh hand rested on her bare waist almost automatically. She sighed at the initial contact, and she lifted her hands to rest on his bare chest, sliding up to his neck and cup both of his cheeks, and her breath hitched as she felt his metal arm snake around her waist. “Teach me how I can take care of you,  _ moy soldat.” _

She pushed him down onto the bed and straddled him, and he let out a soft groan, squeezing her waist as she moved to rock her hips slightly, and she sighed, leaning to rest her forehead on his as she felt him harden against her. He sighed, tilting his face to press a kiss on her neck as with a swift motion, he flipped her on the bed as he towered over her and she yelped, her hands resting on his arms, and her eyes wide as she looked up at him.

“No,” he said softly, his voice husky and rough and deep, as his eyes darkened in desire. He leaned down to press a soft kiss on her lips, nibbling her bottom lip, eliciting a quiet moan, and he ran his metal fingers through her hair, as his flesh hand roamed her body, finally resting on her stomach as she shivered, her back arching to his touch. She let out a sigh as his mouth traveled down her neck, and on her collarbone, then down to her chest. “Let  _ me  _ take care of you.” he murmured.

The instinct to survive has always been deemed as human nature itself, the primary characteristic of which is to basically live. But all her life, all Natalia had ever learned was to survive, and never really  _ live, _ and all her life she had done so in the most violent, and in the most inhumane way she was taught to. She never learned what it was like to live, to  _ truly  _ survive not just for and by herself, because surviving never really meant living, not until she had found James. Not until she had met and found her James, not until she knew how it felt like to be taken good care of, not until she felt his lips on every part of her body and every in of her skin, and not until she felt what it’s like to be warm and enveloped in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> My BuckyNat Secret Santa gift for Punchyourwayout based on the prompt for anything related to the Red Room. Hope you enjoyed!


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